Kup (TF2017)
Kup from The Transformers (2017 TV Series). Bio Kup is a tough old coot. He's almost as old as rust, in fact, and he was plinking Decepticons and Ick-Yaks with acid bursts from his trusty musket laser long before most of you turbo-revvin' young punks were born. In his day, lasers didn't need to use light; they did whatever they were told to do. And liked it. He's probably had a thousand adventures, Kup has, and he'll be glad to relate a story of any one of them at any time to a willing audience. Some can be impatient, and Kup finds this disrespectful and irritating. If there's one thing Kup dislikes, it's when young punks don't respect their elders. If they'd only listen, they might learn something. Hot Rod is one of the worst offenders in this way, but he's a good lad-bot, and Kup will straighten him out sooner or later, even if it takes a tank of Sharkticons. Occasionally, Kup's vast experience gets in his way. When a situation doesn't remind him of anything, he has trouble figuring out what to do. This doesn't happen very often though. His Targetmaster partner is Recoil. History Main Timeline Arc 3 Several hundred years ago, Kup became afflicted with combat fatigue, a loss of nerves and will brought on by too many millions of years of non-stop fighting. Considering himself a liability to the Autobot cause, Kup went into "retirement", wandering space alone in his starship, waiting for the end eventually to take him. He was shaken out of his misery when he crossed paths with a pair of Tyroxian fighters attempting to destroy a lone spacecraft. Spurred into action, Kup disabled the pursuers and brought the hunted pilot on-board, and was surprised to finding he was a fellow Autobot named Hot Rod. Hot Rod was thrilled to have found aid and eagerly tried to recruit Kup into helping him return to Tyroxia and save his comrade Blurr, but Kup wasn't interested in getting involved any further, and he only agreed to take Hot Rod back to Cybertron. The young punk reprogrammed the ship's navigation computers, though, and landed on Tyroxia to rescue Blurr by himself. Kup was finally shaken out of his funk when he realized that Hot Rod represented everything he used to be, and he single-handedly saved Hot Rod and Blurr from their Tyroxian tormentors. His fighting spirit restored, Kup returned to Cybertron with the two Autobots and joined Fortress Maximus's troops alongside his new allies. |Kup's Story| When Fortress Maximus became disheartened by the never-ending cycle of violence on Cybertron, he made plans to escape the war and set up a new life on the planet Nebulos. Though Kup's actions had become a violent mirror of their so-called enemies, he and many of his top warriors chose to follow their leader to this new world aboard the starship Steelhaven. Tragically, a series of incidents and misunderstandings brought the Autobots and Nebulans to the brink of war within days of their arrival. Kup, forgetting why he had traveled there to begin with, was very happy to return fire, and was only stopped by Fortress Maximus himself. They retreated, and in a desperate attempt to show their true intentions, Fortress Maximus, Kup and several others disarmed themselves in front of the Nebulan gates. Furthermore, Fortress Maximus and seven of his lieutenants beheaded themselves and agreed to leave their lifeless heads and bodies, as well as their various weapons, in Nebulan custody so that serious peace talks could be conducted. |Ring of Hate| Kup helped build an Autobot camp in a forest clearing during Fortress Maximus's absence. Soon, their camp was visited by Nebulan representatives from the Council of Peers interested in learning more about their interplanetary visitors, and Kup was glad to oblige. But one of the representatives, Lord Zarak, used the meeting as an opportunity to contact the Autobots' enemies, the Decepticons. |Broken Glass| Matters quickly deteriorated after the arrival of the Decepticons, and two factions of Nebulans joined with both Autobots and Decepticons through bio-mechanical engineering to become Headmasters. Events turned against the Autobots as Lord Zarak, who had binary-bonded to Decepticon leader Scorponok, was able to sway public opinion in favor of the Decepticons, labeling the Autobots as renegades and taking their Headmasters prisoner. Some Nebulans remained loyal to Fortress Maximus's partner, Galen, and traveled to the Autobot camp to forge an alliance. Making use of a new form of bio-mechanical engineering, Kup and the other weaponless Autobots were teamed with Nebulan Targetmasters to replace their lost guns. Kup personally was teamed with Recoil. His first mission working in tandem with the Nebulan went unfortunately awry; the Autobots traveled to The Nursery to protect it from the Decepticons, only for it to be reduced to rubble by the resulting firefight. As the conflict continued, both camps of Nebulans began to realize the devastation they were causing to their homeworld, and they decided to leave Nebulos and travel to Earth in search of other Transformers. |Brothers in Amor| After leaving Nebulos, Kup and the crew of Steelhaven followed an Autobot distress call to the planet called Earth. During the long journey, they had Fortress Maximus heavily upgraded into a larger, more powerful body. Him and Recoil were a bit unsettled by the new war-like outlook of their leader, Galen, but he insisted he was merely changing to fit the circumstances they had been dealt. A battle between the Autobot and Decepticon Headmasters proved costly, as Galen died protecting an Earthling from Scorponok. He passed on his control helmet to this boy, Spike Witwicky, leaving Fortress Maximus and the Autobots in his hands. |Trial by Fire| Spike led Kup and the other Targetmasters on a mission to the Decepticon's island headquarters to rescue his brother, Buster Witwicky. Kup voiced bad feelings about the rescue mission, especially about Spike's suitability to lead the mission. However, when Spike continued fighting despite repeated setbacks, Kup admitted that although Spike brought too much sentiment into the battle, he backed his emotionalism with guts. |The Desert Island of Space| Soon, Fortress Maximus's Autobots met up with the Earth-bound Autobots led by Grimlock, and somehow the two Autobot camps wound up witnessing a battle between Grimlock and Blaster for Autobot leadership. Kup, along with the Autobots from both camps, began to watch this battle on Earth's moon when Ratbat's Decepticons unleashed a surprise attack. |Totaled| Optimus Prime would in time return from the dead to retake command of his forces. Kup was present when Optimus, Fortress Maximus, and Grimlock held a conference to plan out an attack against the time-displaced Galvatron. The mission was postponed when the sudden appearance of Autobots from the future displaced Optimus and a handful of his soldiers to Limbo. Upon seeing the spectacular light-show caused by this mass-substitution, Fortress Maximus jumped to the conclusion that Optimus and the other present-day Autobots had been killed by the time-travelers. Fortress Maximus ordered the troops to attack the "imposters" - Kup taking his future self alongside Grimlock, Hardhead, Crosshairs, Pointblank, and Sureshot - though thankfully cooler heads soon prevailed. Both sets of Autobots joined forces, along with Decepticons from both the future and present, in order to defeat Galvatron. Through their efforts, all time-travelers were eventually sent back to their appropriate eras. |Time Wars| Future Timelines Target: 2005 This Kup is from a future where events similar to the original The Transformers: the Movie occurred. Arc 2 After the attack on Autobot City in 2005, Kup, Hot Rod and Blurr received a psychic prodding from Unicron, alerting them to Galvatron's travel through the timestream back to 1986. Using Galvatron's own time-jump mechanisms, the Autobot trio followed him back into the past, mass-displacing Shockwave, Thundercracker, and Frenzy in the process. Apparently reaching an instinctive conclusion that Galvatron could never be returned to the future by force, Kup and his comrades conspired with the Ultra Magnus of 1986 to trick the Decepticon into returning of his own volition. As Ultra Magnus kept Galvatron busy, the future trio made arrangements to discourage him from staying, including taking Starscream's inert form, and stashing it out of the way. When Galvatron returned to his base, he found his henchmen knocked unconscious and his super-weapon rigged to explode. Once it did, he was confronted with a taunting Starscream claiming credit, (though it was really a disguised Skywarp) and he was egged into blowing the treacherous Decepticon into smithereens. Believing Starscream's death at this juncture altered history, making his actions in 1986 part of an alternate timeline that wouldn't affect his own future, Galvatron reluctantly gave up his plans, picked up his goons, and returned to the future. Kup and his comrades, having successfully framed Starscream and driven Galvatron away, returned to 2005 themselves soon after. |Target: 2005| Arc 3 After Unicron was defeated in 2005 (that again) and Hot Rod rose to become Rodimus Prime, Galvatron went missing. Unable to accept the Decepticon leader was truly dead without seeing the body, Rodimus Prime went searching for him with Kup and Blurr. Unfortunately, his lax attention to Cybertron gave the new Decepticon commander, Shockwave, time to consolidate the army under his control and begin the war anew. Rodimus was forced to return to Cybertron empty-handed, and he only made matters worse when he rashly took out a 10,000-shanix reward for any bounty hunter who could find Galvatron for him. This led to a freelance peacekeeping agent named Death's Head traveling back in time to 1987, where he had learned Galvatron had escaped after the battle with Unicron. Rodimus, Kup, and the other Autobots learned of this turn of events after successfully eliminating a squad of Decepticon Airborne hunter squad. |Wanted: Galvatron - Dead or Alive| Realizing that a trigger-happy mercenary messing with the timestream was just as dangerous as Galvatron could ever be, Rodimus arranged a time-jump to clean up his mess, taking Kup, Blurr and Wreck-Gar back to 1987 along with him. |Burning Sky| In the past, the future Autobots once again found the 20th-century Ultra Magnus fighting with Galvatron, as the Decepticon leader attempted to extract vast amounts of energy from a volcano. Mere seconds after locating Galvatron and engaging him in combat, however, Kup and Blurr were knocked off-line when Galvatron hurled Ultra Magnus's beaten body at them. |Hunters| After regrouping, the Autobots concocted a plan to steal Galvatron's time-jump trigger device and rewire it to propel them all back to their proper place and time. While Kup and the others distracted Galvatron, Wreck-Gar and Rodimus Prime attempted to make the proper modifications. In the end, however, only the Autobots were launched back to the future; Galvatron had modified the device so that the temporal backlash did not affect him, and he stayed in the past.| Fire on High| In 2007, Kup was on hand to witness a full-scale Decepticon assault at Autobase on Cybertron. He fought alongside Rodimus Prime and the other Autobots and, when Rodimus traveled to the planet of Junk to deal with Unicron (the cause behind the Decepticon offensive), Kup stepped up to lead the remaining Autobot forces alongside Ultra Magnus until Soundwave sounded a retreat and the Decepticons fled. |The Legacy of Unicron| Later that year, Autobot City was attacked by Quintessons, and the deactivated Autobots were hung out on the outer walls as a warning for any would-be rescuers. Kup came to Earth with Rodimus Prime and crew to deal with the usurpers, and he led an advance team of Blurr, Smokescreen, and the Throttlebots in searching the complex. They were caught in a heated battle with the Quintessons' shock troopers, but managed to hold their own long enough for their leader to reach the control center and activate Metroplex himself. Resistance faltered rather quickly after that. |Space Pirates| As time passed, the long-term effects of Galvatron's presence in the past became overwhelming. A full-on time storm began brewing at both ends of the timeline, 1989 and 2009. In order to set the universe back on the right course, Rodimus Prime and Kup chose to travel back in time with Blurr, Arcee, Ultra Magnus, and Red Alert to retrieve Galvatron. No, really, for sure this time. Problem was, this time their mass-displacement upon arrival took out 1989's Optimus Prime and several fellow Autobots, leading to more than a little consternation among their 20th-century counterparts. Fortress Maximus, guided by his neophyte Headmaster partner, Spike Witwicky, jumped to the conclusion that Optimus was dead and led his Autobots into battle with Rodimus and his group. Kup didn't fare too well at trying to fight his past self, Grimlock, Hardhead, and three Targetmasters, but soon cooler heads prevailed, and the Autobots joined forces not only with each other, but a detachment from the 1989 Decepticons as well. |Time Wars| Trivia *Frank Welker voices Kup. Changes *The episode form of Target: 2006 was renamed Target: 2005, and all references to 2006 were also changed to accomodate. *Hosehead, Nightbeat, and Siren didn't appear in the original The Transformers: Headmasters miniseries. *Kup & Recoil didn't appear in Trial by Fire! *Among the Throttlebots: only Chase and Wideload appeared in Space Pirates!, with Chase being among the defeated Autobots from Autobot City. *Only the future Kup appeared in Time Wars. **On a related note: Crosshairs, Pointblank, and Sureshot didn't appear in Time Wars. **On another related note: Exactly which Autobots got shunted off to limbo in Time Wars changes. While Optimus Prime, Blaster, and Highbrow are still victims; the other half includes Ironhide, Wheeljack, and Hoist. ***Thus, the Autobot who repairs Goldbug in Time Wars is Brainstorm in the episode adaptation instead of Hoist. **On yet another related note: the future Soundwave and Terrorcons following Rodimus Prime to the past is omitted in the Time Wars's episode adaptation for being ultimately pointless in the story. Category:Articles by Trachodon56 Category:Characters Category:Males Category:Autobots Category:Targetmasters Category:The Transformers (2017 TV Series) Category:The Transformers (2017 TV Series) Characters Category:The Transformers (2017 TV Series) Autobots